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Cub Report: Adventures in Account Merging

I was online the other day farming more endless ore in the quest to make Engineering pets and mounts.

As I character swapped to Farmville part IV: The Reapening, I was bitching about the character swapping to Tom.

See, I have access to two Engineers. Three soon, when my Warrior hits max. One is my Warlock, and is almost up to making another pet. Probably Pierre this time, since it’s about time I make one for myself.

Then there is Hailsword, my son’s Death Knight. He’s six days away from making me a Sky Golem.

Of course, then there is my Blacksmith, who is a few days away from making my Warrior a new 553 plate belt, and 6 days away from upgrading the two handed axe to a level 502.

Sigh. So many professions, so much farming…

I can tell you straight up, if I had to fly around Pandaland mining for all this ore, there is no way, NO WAY I would have such ambitious goals.

As it is, with my Hunter Alchemist farming Motes of Harmony to have extra cheap Living Steel Transmutes, and with extra procs, I can just about stay caught up with everyone’s needs. God bless that damn farm.

So I’m bitching to Tom about the sheer drudgery of character swapping to farm and farm some more, and then I have to log out of my Battle.net account, switch over to the one I set up for my son, log in and then do the crafting on his characters, and all that. Plus, the crafting seems to be going forever because first I make him all the pets and mounts, and then I can start making them for myself.

And then there is helping him tame new pets, level them, someday do the Celestial Tournament…

Umm. What? The whole point is we play together. Like, online at the same time. So he has his Battle.net account, and I have mine.

“Oh no”, he says, “You can both be logged into World of Warcraft at the same time on the same Battle.net account. You have to have two fully activated WoW accounts on the same Battle.net. I do it myself to swap Heirlooms back and forth.”

Umm.

Wait, so let me get this straight. If I had a second fully paid WoW account on my own Battle.net account, it could be logged in on one computer while I’m logged in on mine. AND I could mail Heirlooms to it?

“Yeah, anything that is ‘bind to account’ like Heirlooms, pandarian treasures, all the pets and mounts are shared…”

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY?!?!

How may years now, and there is always something new to be surprised with.

So I investigated. I emailed Blizzard support. And I asked flat out if I could move a WoW account from one of my Battle.net accounts to another.

I wasn’t worried about being suspected of selling or buying a WoW account. Both of them have had the same recurring billing info forever and a day. I just didn’t think they’d let me move an entire account.

And if they did, what would happen? The Cub has mounts I don’t have (like the Sky Golem) and I have many, many pets that he doesn’t, and mounts, and some of my pets I have three full ones of.

What would happen to the mounts? Would his get lost? Would MINE?

What about pets that he has, that I have three of? Would he get them in cages in his inventory or game mail, or would they just vanish?

Would his lower level pets replace my max level?

I got a reply back from Blizzard after two days.

I was told they certainly could move that account from one Battle.net account to another, no charge, no problems. I was provided a link to a three page PDF form I had to fill out, and I was told to attach a picture of my photo government-issued ID and the form to the ticket and they’d take care of it.

So I did that thing. Three pages, easily filled out, quick scan of my state driver’s license, attached them to the ticket, sent it in.

Less than 6 hours later, I went to login and the Blizzard Battle.net beta game interface had a new feature; a drop down box right over the “play” button that let me choose between my original account, and the newly named “WoW1”.

I logged into WoW1, and there was my son’s character list, just like normal.

I’ve been playing with this for two days now, and I have discovered some interesting things.

I have merged a World of Warcraft account that was played in it’s entirety on another Battle.net account.

Both of my WoW accounts now share mounts. Mounts he had, such as the Sky Golem, we both now have. Likewise, everything I had he now has access to. Perfect mount merge.

Achievements he earned I got credit for, like parts of the Explorer meta. And all the achievements and titles I had earned, he now has access to.

The pets… the pets didn’t go quite as I’d hoped, but about exactly as I expected.

It turns out, every single pet he had vanished in the merge. All of my pets, and the quantity of them, remain unchanged. He has my pets as his own, now, including the names I gave them.

Where we had both had max level Minfernals, we do not have two of them after the merge, just the one. His is gone into the Twisted Nether. Likewise any pet he had, regardless of level. They were not merged; they are simply gone.

Now, like I said, I had hoped I’d log in and find two Minfernals, you know, that kind of thing. But I anticipated that, worse case, his pets would vanish.

So just in case, before I sent off that ticket with the attachments… I caged every single pet in his list that I could, and mailed the cages to my Warlock. I figured worse case, all of his pets would be gone but he’d have mine, and we’d have his caged pets to mail to Cassie to see if she was missing any.

That was a lot of cages. Many, many cages.

Good thing, because if I hadn’t of done that, all those pets would have been lost too.

It makes me wonder… he had a trial account (the free to play to level 20) on that old Battle.net email. Did the pets all stay on that account, left behind? If we were to login to that free trial account, would all those pets still be there, patiently waiting to be played again?

I like to think so. Given that situation, I consider it a gift that he brought his Sky Golem with him. After all, I didn’t have it, and it would have been so much fun to have it just vanish silkily into the satin darkness.

Tested the logging in; yes, we can both log in at the same time, on our two different WoW accounts.

Drawback? We can’t BOTH be on Battle.tag chat for both transmit and receive. Someone could send something to me, and I won’t see it if he is also logged in, and vice versa. That is a big drawback, because there doesn’t seem to be any warning to someone that their messages aren’t getting through to me. After all, Alex can see them fine, he just ignores them.

Mailing Heirlooms back and forth between accounts does indeed work. All those Heirlooms I spent so much time earning and upgrading? All now have a use once again! Now the Cub can use them!

And then the biggest drawback of all hit me between the eyes.

After logging in and out for about 20 minutes, showing the Cub how it works, my account got locked.

Locked hard.

Why?

Changes in my logging habits.

Really? Something changed in how I’m logging in? You’re kidding! You don’t think it had anything to do with, oh, I dunno… adding a whole new second account I’m swapping between now, do you?

I was locked.

I was told to check my email to find out what to do. I mean, locked. Cannot access Battle.net or any Blizzard game in any way, period.

So, let’s see the email.

The email gave me a link to follow to begin the process of unlocking my account.

I had to provide my Battle.net email address, my first and last names, and enter in one of those CAPTCHA graphic codes.

I hate CAPTCHA codes, because the damn letters frequently blend into each other so I can’t make them out. I suppose I should be grateful English is my native language, so I can recognize mangled versions of the English alphabet.

So I enter that in, and I’m taken to another screen where I have two choices.

One, I have to answer my account security question, OR…

I have to enter in the first 6 digits of any of my Blizzard game authentication keys that are actually on my account. And it has to be the first 6 digits of a key from a physical game, NOT a digitally purchased game. Like, the code from a store box bought game.

Oh, holy crap. OMIGOD.

So, what is the security question? I don’t remember setting that up.

“Who is your childhood hero.”

Wait, what? Really? I set that up nine years ago, and I expected myself to remember that? Shit, that’s exactly the kind of question whose answer changes from week to week. I look back and have no idea who I would have thought was my childhood hero.

What did I answer, Robert Heinlein? JRR Tolkein? Gandhi? Margaret Thatcher? Han Solo?

Think, think…

Shit, I have no idea.

I try Heinlein, it’s the most likely choice… no.

Casca?

No.

I know!

Remo Williams…

No.

Fine, go back, this is doomed.

The first six digits of an authentication code… of World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, any of their expansions…

Shit.

I have purchased three copies of World of Warcraft and all of the expansions over the years, one for me, one for Cassie, and one for the Cub. Since the Cub’s accounts are now on my Battle’net account, I’ve got a 66% chance of having that code, right?

Yeah, fuck no. Tried ’em all, nope nope nope.

Okay, so what else might I have considered a childhood hero?

Maybe it was Robert A. Heinlein…

Shit. And I wouldn’t have picked Sten or Steven Brust, I didn’t get into them until I was in the Marines.

WAIT!

I only bought Starcraft II once, for my account! Alex has been playing it on my account, so if I have the disc, I have the code!

Search my desk… there it is, shiny and new as the day I bought it.

Hands shaking, I enter the code…

YES!!! I’m in! I’m in, thank you, thank you, I can play the game, I haven’t lost it all, and seriously what the fuck, another CAPTCHA?

I enter the CAPTCHA, choose a new password… and I have to enter another CAPTCHA.

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8 thoughts on “Cub Report: Adventures in Account Merging”

Yeah, the chat window limitation caught me by surprise as well, I’d made the natural assumption that whatever system I’m currently “active” on would somehow magically receive chat… or at the very least, if I initiated, replies would go there. Nope.

After some experimentation it looks like whichever account logged in MOST RECENTLY will get the chat 100% of the time. This appears to be true when I’m playing both accounts on one PC as well as on different PCs, since you can only be logged into Battle.net on one account on one PC at a time (far as I’ve been able to determine, anyway, if anyone has a way around that with the new Beta client I’d love to hear it) I thought that whichever account logged into BN last might be the trick but that doesn’t seem to be the case. So, if chat’s going to the wrong window, try shutting down the game on the one you want it on and go in again… and if it’s a queue server during busy times, just keep an eye on the second window every now and then. Helps to set up a separate chat window for BN chat and whispers so they’ll be easier to notice.

I’d love to see an option in the BN client or elsewhere to designate the logged in account to send chat to, that should sidestep the issue… or even an in-game “/setbnchathere” option or somesuch. I’ve seen suggestions that chat should broadcast to all windows but… I suspect in many cases, including yours, that wouldn’t be a good solution for any number of reasons. 🙂

My husband quit WoW last year and for awhile I kept things active for him in case he came back. I considered merging our accounts to simplify things but then I found out about the pets getting deleted. He has the Spirit of Competition (which I even leveled a bit for him), I don’t. Debate over, not happening :p

The other downside is that when me and my daughter are logged on at the same time, it’s impossible for me to say have a character on another realm join a flex raid as it only shows one of us on real ID and it’s usually my daughters character. However it makes life alot easier as I would have had to grind 2 ashes and 2 fiery warhorses. . .

Oh and I love the chance that one of your child hood heroes could have been Remo Williams, Destroyed ftw!!

Bear, are you and the cub able to do pet battles at the same time? That was one thing that disappointed me when we had an account for my son – the shared pets could only be used by one character at a time…..which meant we could never duel each other or even both be pet farming at the same time.

It looks like they may have tweaked the Battle.net chat situation in 5.4.2, now people I’m tagged with CAN actually type to either of my windows specifically, at least once I’ve whispered them, something about a * on one of the accounts that lets them chat to that one (can’t explain better since I haven’t actually seen it on my end).

It also seems that the “last account logged in” thing may no longer be in effect, or is only the default until other things change. I’ve had the window change even when I haven’t re-logged on either account, could be tied into something the other chatter did but I’m not sure.

Big downside for me is that I have two accounts in the same bnet account and have toons on each account on different servers that I am using raf to level. One can’t friend the other, though, because it says that it can’t find the player when I try to add them to the friend list. That means that they can’t summon one another.